Forum:Retcons
Let's talk about how we want to revise some of the old material so as not to completely invalidate old RP's while removing the stuff we no longer like about them. I'll share my ideas. The Crusade: Rather than being a remnant military force, it starts off as a small militia founded by local Rotarians who set out to organize survivors and rebuild. A generation later it's leadership is taken over by more militant people who change the focus of the Crusade from rebuilding America to wiping out what it imagines to be surviving Communist enclaves. Any community that doesn't closely emulate Pre-War America is subject to attack, meaning most of them. A later generation decides to scale down the Crusade and refocus on rebuilding while still hunting down mutants, angering some of the old guard who are sent to the frontier to hopefully get killed. These dissenters form the Last Legion. Project Warrior Weapons: A small group of Enclave scientists purchase slaves from the wasteland and subject them to experimental procedures, including CODE-induced combat training and memory grafts. The procedures render the subjects unstable and have degenerative effects on their physiology. The project is abandoned and the subjects turned loose as insturments of terror rather than forming the new rank-and-file the Enclave hoped for. Ghouls People Army: Everywhere and nowhere, the GPA has no central leadership and no means of communicating between cells. Nobody even knows how many cells exist, including members of the GPA. Methods and radicalism are wildly divergent: some GPA bands are violently anti-smoothskin, others only make retributive strikes, and others simply hold their ground no matter what. The biggest GPA group is on the Mexico-Texas border. Shadow Talkers: A cabal of high ranking individuals from various high-tech groups that might otherwise be enemies, the Shadow Talkers collaborate to empower themselves, carefully staging events so that no one group becomes too powerful. They watch ambitious people across the wasteland and see if they accomplish their self-given goals, if they're found to be compatible and effective, an invitation is extended to them. Refusing the invitation is a death sentence. They all seem like good revisions. I especially like the Shadow Talkers, the aura of mystery and such that surrounds them is quite a good theme for the faction. Plus their concept is pretty original and unique. I'll help out with some of the revisions if you want, just tell me when. Thanks! What else needs revision? The Horde: The Crusade's name for an otherwise unnamed alliance of mercenaries, regulators, and wastelanders who banded together in the Capital Wasteland to oppose them. No BoS or Enclave involvement. The Claws: A mercenary outfit with a charter based on egalitarianism, the Claws had a good start defending caravans and wasteland towns in the Capital Wasteland region from myriad threats. Eventually, the unstable mix of personalities at the group's core lead to various disasters including drawing the ire of the Crusade upon the Capital Wasteland. After abandoning the Horde at a crucial moment, most members of the Claws were considered persona non grata in the Capital Wasteland. After a period where the members scattered themselves across the wasteland, they banded together once more in an effort to salvage their reputations. They soon vanished from the wasteland entirely. Few people know what happened to them, but most are relieved to be rid of them. American Wasteland Army: Descended from survivalists who endured the war in a remote retreat with deep basements, the AWA sought to rule as much of the wasteland as possible. They kept people under their dominion safe from wild animals, raiders, and mutants but exploited the populace mercilessly. Eventually broken by attrition. This is cool. I'm glad the retcon ideas are flowing smoothly. Is there any way I can help? You could look through the characters or the roleplays. Use your best judgement to point out what is shitty as is. I like to think I dealt with most of it already, but that would be a bit too optimistic. Ovaltine, you have a surprisingly good grasp of the core of the subject matter. That was a very good breakdown of the AWA. Just add a "holier-than-thou" attitude and we should be good. Honestly, I'd just prefer to see Warrior Weapons gone entirely. I'm kind of using my iteration of WW already, incorporated into the Sand Hills Tribe. The twins criticized the use of CODE as a basis for training soldiers because it was originally made to rehabilitate criminals, the altered programming would have been easy to disrupt. Their solution was to create a religion where the adherents would have no fear of death. Like the Enclave's warrior weapons, the sand hills tribesmen aren't disciplined soldiers, they're mentally unstable, and their bodies are doomed to fail them without maintainence from the twins or their shamans. What makes them more reliable though is that their programming cannot be undone nearly as easily (you would basically need a cult de-programmer and a lot of time, anyone feel like making a Ghoul who happened to be one?) and they're easily "modded," by the twins. As I've also hinted at, the tribe is regarded as a heavy club for the twins, their efforts at "perfecting," the human race lie elsewhere. Ah, fire away then. It's better than the wacky radiation gives you superpowers thing (I know it's a part of the Fallout theme, but I took it beyond the logical extreme and made Kaiju in human forms). I've been contemplating the AWA some more. I have this vision in my head of them starting out in Erie, PA and then carving out this little empire from Buffalo to Detroit before the army refuses to march any further. Like a microcosm of Alexander the Great. Then the empire collapses after the general dies and the AWA degenerates over time from a cohesive empire, to allied city-states, to bickering rivals, and finally abandoning or being driven out of the string of towns and becoming bands of mercs and raiders that share some cultural traits. What do you think Twenty? I like the idea. I assume we are drastically scaling down all retconned factions in both manpower and equipment. If so, I think it can work. I'm not sure about the distance from Buffalo to Detroit, so I don't know about how large of an area that is. Also, are we retconning RPs too? Ovaltine suggested they just be called overdramatised retellings of events that weren't actually as large-scale. Basically in the above premise, the AWA would have had a territory that narrowly surrounded a little over half of Lake Erie before their decline and collapse. Sorry, I probably should have rephrased that. What I meant to ask is this: are we going to retcon each individual RP to be more in-line with the new site-wide outlook? @Ovaltine: That works. I'm not familiar with the geography of that area, but it sounds good. My only concern is if we plan on retelling RPs, as some of them involve the AWA clashing with the Crusade, and the two are rather far apart. Probably the biggest offender in this case is the "Nuke" RP. That can be pretty easily done by saying they just sent small groups of soldiers and claimed they made a much greater effort to take hold of the titular WMD. Could make an extremely well traveled, sneaky ghoul character who tells tall tales. The RPs are his version of events. Edit: Just thought, what if the RPs were The Eldest telling stories to visitors. Stories based on real events, but distorted by a combination of senility and distortions because they're not first hand (like a game of telephone).